OMD released the song “Pandora’s Box” in 1991.
The track appeared on Sugar Tax, an album by the English electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Its subject is not the ancient Greek woman herself: the song was inspired by Louise Brooks, the American actress who played Lulu in G. W. Pabst’s 1929 film Pandora’s Box.
That connection gives the song a layered cultural background. A classical myth supplied the title of Wedekind’s play, the play helped inspire the film, and the film in turn inspired OMD’s pop song. Each work uses the idea of a box as a symbol of release, attraction, and consequences.
The song belongs to OMD’s early-1990s period, when the band returned to prominent UK chart activity after its previous decade of synth-pop success.